Today is the day of Saint Jerome, a Doctor of the Church who organized the Holy Bible (which is why Bible Day is also celebrated on this September 30th).
Learn his beautiful story: http://instagram.com/p/tkIdmdnYwW/
Excerpted from CancaoNova.com
SAINT JEROME
He was born in Dalmatia in 340 and became known as a writer, philosopher, theologian, rhetorician, grammarian, dialectician, historian, exegete, and Doctor of the Church. The famous phrase belongs to Saint Jerome: “Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.”
With his parents’ inheritance, he went to fulfill his vocation as a fervent scholar in Rome. While in the “Eternal City,” Jerome took the opportunity to visit the Catacombs, where he contemplated the chapels and strove to decipher the writings on the tombs of the martyrs.
In that city, he had a dream that was decisive for his conversion: in this dream, he presented himself as a Christian and was reproved by Jesus Himself for not being truthful (for he had not yet embraced the Holy Scriptures, but only pagan writings). At the end of his stay in Rome, he was baptized.
After that, he began his theological studies and decided to embark on a #pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but a prolonged illness forced him to remain in Antioch. Weary of the world and desiring quietude and penance, he withdrew to the desert of Chalcis, with the purpose of pursuing a hermitic life. Ordained a priest in 379, he withdrew to study, in order to respond to the needs of the time with the help of literature. Having studied the original languages to better understand the Scriptures, Jerome was able, at the request of Pope Damasus, to accurately translate the Bible into Latin (the official language of the Church at the time). This translation was named the Vulgata.
Thus, with joy, unparalleled dedication, and pleasure, he strived to enrich the universal Church. He left Rome and went to live permanently in Bethlehem in the year 386, where he remained as a penitent and scholarly monk, continuing his biblical translations until he passed away in 420, on September 30th, at almost 80 years of age. The Church declared him the patron of all those who dedicate themselves to the study of the Bible and fixed “Bible Day” in the month of his death anniversary, or rather, the day of the possession of the great biblical promise: Eternal Life.
Saint Jerome, pray for us.